life

APECKS, ten years on

Jeni — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:34:43 +0100

Roughly ten years ago, I was attending KAW’98. I remember that conference as one of the best weeks of my life. I had great company. I saw scenery like I’d never seen before. I presented my PhD work for the first time to people who were (at least politely) interested in it. And I learned a lot, both from the presentations and less formal discussions.

(I remember driving back to Nottingham when we returned; a rainbow appeared in front of us, seeming to arch over our destination in a perfect finale.)

Looking back at that paper is like looking at my past generally is: much of it makes me cringe, but parts of it are surprisingly good. What’s interesting is that if you swap a few terms for modern buzzwords, it’s still a pretty neat idea. It’s also amazing how far we’ve come — how much has become common-place — in just ten years.

In modern terms, what I did was develop web-based social software, called APECKS, for ontology creation. The idea was that people would create their own ontologies (either from scratch or based on others), and the system would find similarities and differences between them, with the aim of starting conversations about and sharing knowledge.

APECKS was built on top of a web application framework written in a dynamic programming language. We didn’t have Ruby on Rails in those days: I turned a MOO (a text-based virtual reality) into a HTTP server (with caching and everything!) and that formed the basis of the application.

APECKS was designed to use (lowercase) web services. It used one for some of the complex ontology comparison that it needed to do. RDF was nowhere near done; OWL not even in a twinkle in its parents’ eyes: nowadays, you’d build around those formats, which fit fairly well onto the KIF-based formalism that APECKS used. (The lack of a standard way to make the captured knowledge available was one of the reasons I got interested in XML — we’ve just celebrated that 10-year anniversary too.)

APECKS captured change history and design rationale as well as supporting unstructured communication between users. It didn’t provide feeds because, guess what, feeds hadn’t been invented yet. If I were doing it today, they would be a major feature.

APECKS didn’t do REST properly, but that concept wasn’t around either! APECKS was also rather formal and uninventive in getting knowledge out of people (although it did use those knowledge-acquisition techniques that are automatable, such as card sorts). Now, you could make the interface so much better, because now we have AJAX.

Part of me wants to update it. The semantic web is going to happen, and we’re going to need tools that help people share and link together the ontologies that they create. Tools that help people create ontologies without being semantic-web experts.

But I’ve been there, and done that, and anyway I’m sure that today’s students are creating applications that are much more innovative.

Decision making

Jeni — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:41:56 +0000

When I was young, my dad taught me a way of making tough decisions. You get a sheet of paper, make one column for each of the possibilities, and list pros and cons. The one that ends up with the most (important) pros and least (important) cons is the one that you should choose. My dad is a TJ-type.

My mum also taught me a way of making tough decisions. Her way was to toss a coin. But the point was not to just toss the coin, but to see how you feel when it landed. If you’re pleased, go with it. If you’re disappointed, ignore it and go with the other choice. My mum is a FJ-type.

Now I’m an INFP, which means that the latter method appeals to me a lot more than the former. I made that table of laptops in my last post, but all it did for me was expose how many factors there are: there’s no obvious winner.

So I’ve been picturing tossing a six-sided coin (yes, I know, it’s called a die), and this is how it goes:

Toshiba Portege R500: I feel disappointed. My present laptop seemed pretty sturdy, and it’s broken under my (moderately heavy) usage, so I hate to think how the Toshiba would fare. I don’t want my new laptop to fall apart.
Dell M1330: I feel downcast. They’ve got an amazing spec, looks aren’t bad, but they’re big and weighty when I want small and light.
Lenovo X300: I feel appalled. Thank you to everyone who pointed this option out to me, but despite the specs I just cannot get over the design. It’s too black-boxy, business like, the very opposite of fun. It doesn’t fit with my vision of me.
Sony Vaio TZ32: I feel resigned. It’d be good enough, but it’s so samey. Everyone in my family has a Vaio.
Apple Macbook Air: I feel delighted, thrilled, excited, and a little bit naughty. It’s not the sensible option, but it’s the one my heart wants.

So there you have it, decision made. And yes, I know:

It doesn’t have a DVD drive; but I’ve used the DVD drive in this laptop what? three times? My previous laptop didn’t have a CD/DVD drive and it was perfectly usable day-to-day. When I needed to access a DVD, I popped it into a shared DVD drive on the desktop computer and shared it. I can do the same with the Macbook Air using Remote Disk.
It hasn’t got a built-in WWAN adapter; but I don’t want to fork out for always-on internet. I’m prepared to hop from hotspot to hotspot (that’s what I do at the moment anyway).
It hasn’t got a built-in Ethernet adapter; as above. I do remember the last time I used the Ethernet adapter on this laptop, but it was a while ago.
The battery’s not removable except by shipping to base; but I don’t think I’ve ever had a backup battery for any of my laptops. When they’re out of power, they’re out of power and I have to do something else with my time, until I get to charge them again. Yes, this has been frustrating on a few rare occasions, but never enough to get me to invest in another battery.
It’s only got 2GB memory; but I’m not even using my 1GB at the moment, even with Firefox, Oxygen, Thunderbird and Acrobat Reader open. I don’t think it’ll prove a practical limit.
It’s only got a 64GB hard disk; but that’s the same as the other laptops that I’ve been considering. Most of my data is held remotely on my slug and it’s good discipline to keep it there. I’m quite happy using USB drives to supplement my on-the-move storage (you can get a 16GB one for less than £50 nowadays!).

In short, all its disadvantages are things that I either don’t care about or am quite prepared to live with.

But before I order it, I want to know if any of you Mac users out there have any recommendations for must-have accessories? I was planning on getting iWork since it’s only £55 and I fancy seeing how Numbers works, and on getting the extended warranty. And a case or bag. Anything else?

Internet Radio

Jeni — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:17:54 +0000

When my dad introduced me to his internet radios, I thought, “wow, there’s something for everyone!” So I went looking for something for me. And yesterday I found it: Kink ClassX. It plays “alternative” music from the 60s to the present day. I listened to Bowie, Marilyn Manson, Arethra Franklin, Squeeze, Souxie, Otis Redding, the White Stripes: a really diverse set of music, with one thing in common — All Good.

OK, so you have to sit through german-language new bulletins every hour on the hour, but to me that just adds to the charm.

Ogbuji fund

Jeni — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:34:32 +0000

Update: The Ogbujis have also set up a charitable fund called The Kingdom Kids to “help provide families with information and support to help protect other young children from the hazards of house fires.”

Some of you will already know that Chimezie Ogbuji (Uche’s brother) lost two of his daughters (aged 6 and 2) at a fire in his house over the weekend. I gather that his third daughter (aged 14 months) has now also died.

A more devastating loss is hard to conceive, especially for those of us with small children of our own. There are two addresses for donations, to help with funeral expenses and to help Chime and his wife Roschelle to eventually rebuild their home and their lives:

Ogbuji Family Fund, c/o Dr Linus Ogbuji, 2737 Green Road, Shaker Heights OH 44122

and:

The Sussex Association–Ogbuji Family Fund, c/o Mrs. Margaret Dobbins, 3632 Rawnsdale Road, Shaker Heights, OH 44122

You can get a lot of fire safety advice from the web, but this tragedy is also motivating me to get a free fire safety check (UK only).

There are times I wish I believed in God, and could offer prayers. Blogging just isn’t the same.

And she's back

Jeni — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 21:54:45 +0100

So first there was the XML Summer School. This year was my sixth, and it was really great to hang out with chums old and new. I love that

you get to meet people from all corners of the XML community, even ones you haven’t got the slightest interest in, and learn that they’re human too (even the web services guys)
there’s always something to learn; I’ve seen some talks for six years on the trot, others were completely new this year, but they’re all worth attending because the audience, war stories and discussion are always different. Also, because each talk is aimed at newcomers, you get a great overview of topics that you’re not so familiar with, and you can always chat to the speaker later to find out more
there are social events laid on every evening that you’re expected to attend, so you’re practically forced to socialise, which is useful for an insecure introvert like me who’d otherwise be sitting in her hotel room getting miserable imagining everyone else having a good time
there’s a creche, so despite being inseparable from two small children over the last four years, I’ve still been able to attend without dragging an entourage with me (not that I object to the entourage, just the expense and the dependency)

I left feeling not only invigorated and inspired, but also a part of a fun and friendly community.

The following week, we moved house. Twelve days later, we’re almost completely unpacked, and the important things are done. We have wireless, positioned nicely so that virtually the whole house gets “Excellent” coverage. Thanks to my father, we have a NSLU2 running Debian and acting as our low-power-consumption file and mail server. (For those that are interested, I’m getting access from my Windows machines using Xming to actually interact with the machine, and WebDrive to map a drive onto the file system.) And we have an area entirely dedicated to Lego. Yes, this might be my dream house.

(We’re also only a 40 minute drive from Heathrow, 30 minute train from Waterloo, so if anyone I know’s visiting the UK and wants to drop in, you’re more than welcome. There’s even a spare room.)

And amongst all this, I had to record a virtual presentation on Creole for Overlap day at Extreme. The sound quality’s not great, but it’s a reasonable 10-minute introduction, I think. It sounds like they got good attendance: will someone who was there please post about it?

Today's life-skills: shoelaces and playdoh

Jeni — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:42:09 +0100

I learnt two new life-skills today.

First, how to tie my shoelaces using the Ian Knot. It’s very quick, and works just as well with anything with loops, such as supermarket or nappy bags.

Second, how to make playdoh. A standard recipe all over the web is:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 cup water
2 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon food colouring

You mix the flour, salt and cream of tartar together in a big saucepan, then gradually add the liquids and stir continuously over a low heat until it becomes a ball. It looks really liquid and gloopy at first, then suddenly, bam, its playdoh. It’s more squidgy than the stuff you buy, but that just makes it all the better for rolling and cutting and squooching and so on. You can add glitter and other things, but I didn’t today. And apparently it’s bad for pets.

I actually couldn’t find any cream of tartar at the local shop, so substituted the 2 teaspoons cream of tartar with 6 teaspoons vinegar, which works fine but gives it a rather acrid stench. Apparently another substitute for cream of tartar is lemon juice, which might smell rather better. Also you need a lot more than 1 teaspoon food colouring if you’re doing it blue, as I was — more like half a bottle or more.